Category: Scott Adams

I’ve been working with the UC Berkeley start-up ecosystem – the largest in the world – to help improve their odds of success. The stakes are high. Consider the healthcare field alone, and how much can be saved in terms of both lives and money. I included at the bottom of this post a snapshot of some start-ups coming out of that ecosystem.

Now imagine how many more healthcare start-ups are popping up all over the country. That is a lot of stranded potential unless these innovations can make it to market. The hardest challenges are getting funding and, obviously, the FDA approval. That’s a tough road. I’m doing my part today to make that easier by giving them some attention here.

The path to market for these innovations might be a lot easier if Trump appoints someone like Jim O’Neill to head the FDA. O’Neill would like to speed up the approval process by using a more rational risk-management model. The opportunity for improvement is gigantic.

Here are just a few healthcare start-ups to give you an idea of the potential.

Stroll Health enables ambulatory clinicians to make personalized, value-based referrals. Stroll processes each patient through our intelligence algorithm using millions of healthcare data to show out-of-pocket costs for each location and service in real time. Physicians and patients select and electronically order through Stroll, and we follow through to make sure medically necessary care happens.

First Derm is a mobile app that provides users with personalized dermatology information.

Ava is on a mission to empower 360 million people with hearing loss to follow group conversations
again, using state-of-the-art mobile and speech technologies. We connect together devices in a room to
show the user who says what and when, in less than a second.

KNOX Medical Diagnostics:
Mismanagement of asthma leads to hospitalizations and ED visits. Traditional at-home pulmonary
function tests are inaccurate. On-site tests are only available in specialized locations and not readily
accessible. KNOX has developed Spiritus, a reliable and convenient asthma management tool for
families, which includes a portable device that asthmatic kids breathe into to capture consistent
information regarding lung function. Parents can view and immediately act upon the results. Information
sent to the iOS app is saved to SaaS servers for physicians to track patients’ asthma severity in-between
office visits.

BioInspira is a sensor platform startup. At BioInspira, we are advancing airborne chemicals and
pathogens detection for growing industrial and healthcare needs. Our first product is a bio-based natural
gas sensor that is 1000x more sensitive, 100x smaller and 100x lower in cost than current sensors.

—

You can learn more about UC Berkeley-related start-ups at BerkeleyStartupNetwork.com. (Site is new, so some start-ups will not be listed yet.)

I’m watching the mainstream media have fits over so-called “fake news.” The theme they are pushing is that fake news stories are more damaging to society than normal news that includes the following:

1. True stories told out of context to intentionally mislead.

2. Biased reporting that the media doesn’t realize is biased.

3. Giving a spotlight to people who are lying.

4. Misleading by putting emphasis on some things and not others.

5. True stories too complicated for the public to understand.

6. True reports of sources that happen to be lying but we don’t know it. (That gives you the Iraq war, for example.)

7. Having boths sides represented when one side is clearly lying or wrong.

8. Simplification to the point of misleading.

9. Showing clear disdain for the opinions on one side but not the other.

I could go on. But I think you get the point. Most humans live the illusion that people can do a good job of sorting out truth from fiction if only they have good data. But that’s only true for trivial decisions with no emotional content. For any decision that matters, facts are irrelevant to decision-making. Humans choose their paths based on how they feel. Later they rationalize their decisions. The human mind doesn’t make decisions based on facts and reason. We only think we do.

Does fake news matter in a world in which humans don’t use facts and reason to make decisions in the first place? Well, yes and no.

Obviously fake news can change people’s minds and influence the real world. If that influence causes people to act in some dangerous or suboptimal way, we can say the fake news was bad.

But what if the fake news is created with good intentions? For example, suppose you believed that Donald Trump would be the best president and you knew that facts and reason don’t change minds as well as fake news. In that situation you might create a fake news story that helps your candidate win, but you would be doing so in the interest of society.

In my worldview – that of a hypnotist and persuader – all news is persuasion, and it is presented for that purpose even if the presenters don’t think of it that way. According to this worldview, what matters is the effectiveness of the fake news and whether it is intended for the public good or just to generate click-ad revenue for the creator. Fake news is neither good nor bad. It is a tool of persuasion, just like mainstream news that can be either based on truth or not. In both cases what matters is how people are influenced. The underlying truth is generally beyond the public’s grasp. And it doesn’t matter most of the time.

if you live in the two-dimensional world where you still think truth and facts and reason matter to decisions, you probably think fake news is a problem. But in the 3rd dimension – where persuasion matters and reason is an illusion – fake news is a tool. And a tool can be used for good or evil.

If you’re a divorced parent with shared custody of kids, you might love my start-up’s free app. It’s like the Uber app without the Uber car, for all those times you have to meet each other to exchange the kids. No more texting “Where are you” and asking about timing while one or both of you are driving. The app can even prompt you to use it at the right times based on your custody schedule.

And if you can’t get your ex to use the app, just have one of your kids that has a phone fire up the app while riding with the parent. Same result.

This is just one of thousands of uses for the WhenHub app. You’ll think of your own.

We’re living in one of the most interesting times in human history. We just witnessed reality forking into two separate paths right in front of us.

As regular readers of this blog know, my background in hypnosis and persuasion has erased my belief that some people can see reality for what it is and some cannot. My worldview is that the human brain did not evolve to understand reality on any deep level because we don’t need that ability to survive and reproduce. If your illusion keeps you alive, it’s good enough. And that brings me to today.

The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States has effectively forked reality into two versions that are running in parallel. Clinton’s supporters believe they are living in a world that is a repeat of 1930s Germany, with Trump playing the part of Adolf Hitler. See this reaction for a typical example.

Meanwhile, the other half of the country believes we elected a highly-capable populist who will “drain the swamp” and bring a business approach to government along with greater prosperity.

So how do you know which reality is the real one? The fast answer is that you can’t know. As I said, the human brain did not evolve to understand reality. But just for fun and education, I’ll tell you the best way dig down to the next layer of truth: Look for the Cognitive Dissonance trigger.

In this case, Clinton supporters were persuaded to believe that Trump is OBVIOUSLY the next coming of Hitler. Or maybe worse because Trump is also rude and sexist. If that version of reality is true, Trump could not have been elected president. But he was. That’s the trigger for cognitive dissonance: two observations that don’t fit together.

How can it simultaneously be true that Trump is OBVIOUSLY the next Hitler while it is also true that half the country didn’t notice? There are at least three ways to explain-away this dissonance. Maybe…

Half the country are sexist, racist monsters too, so they like Trump.

or…

Half the country is stupid and can’t identify a Hitler that is right in front of them.

or…

Clinton supporters have been duped into believing something ridiculous about Trump.

Given this set-up, most normal human minds would assume the problem was with other people. That’s how cognitive dissonance works. We like to think we are rational while others are not. So you would expect in this situation that Clinton supporters would enter a type of dream state in which they interpret their reality as being surrounded by racist-sexist-stupid citizens who just elected a genocidal dictator. They have to enter this dream because the only alternative involves believing that they themselves are gullible and deluded.

Trump supporters have no such trigger for cognitive dissonance in this particular case because their candidate won. Their worldview is consistent. They think Trump is the most capable candidate and enough people recognized that fact to make him president. Most of these people believe Trump is not a racist and they believe they are not racists either (or not much anyway). Nothing about a Trump-supporter’s experience would trigger cognitive dissonance. But Clinton supporters have a huge trigger for cognitive dissonance, so it is more likely they entered a new illusion in this particular case.

For further evidence that the anti-Trumpers are living in an illusion, consider that the street protests against Trump fizzled out. That means the illusion of Trump-as-Hitler is already starting to fade. You also see it in the surging stock market and in the sharp uptick in citizen confidence in the economy.

The Hitler illusion will continue to fade. But for now the citizens of the United States live in two separate realities. As a hypnotist, I doubt any of us can see reality for what it is. My worldview is that we were in one kind of illusion before and some of us moved to another. When it comes to understanding reality, the best we can do is pick a version that does a good job predicting.

My view of reality predicts that the Hitler illusion will wear off in time because Trump keeps refusing to do Hitler-like things. Check my prediction at the end of Trump’s term. I think you’ll see his popularity continue to improve from here.

—

My start-up, WhenHub, allows you to create visualizations of events over time. Here are a few of the visualization options. Below that is a timeline of my life that I am playing with, updating as I have time.

And here’s a timeline of some major events in my life. I left out the personal stuff. Expand the WhenCast to full screen to play. See icon on bottom right of the frame.

A new CNBC poll shows that optimism in the economy has surged since Trump got elected. That’s how Trump creates money from nothing. Literally.

The economy runs on optimism. The more you have, the better your economy will be, all other things being equal. And Trump just cranked up the optimism in a way that history has rarely seen. The stock market is up too, as you would expect when you have more optimism.

Optimistic business owners invest today because they expect tomorrow to be better. That investment creates jobs and stimulates the economy, creating a self-fulfilling path to prosperity. Individual companies can fail and succeed as usual, but the economy as a whole is likely to do well when optimism is high.

In the ancient world, the big problem was resources, not optimism. You didn’t always have access to raw materials, the right kind of labor, or markets. But in 2016 we can generally find anything we need and move anything to anywhere. The physical element of economics is largely solved. All that matters today is how we think about the economy. That’s the key element.

President Obama understood psychology and economics too. His cool, rational demeanor was the perfect leadership style to get us out of the 2009 downturn. He didn’t panic, so we didn’t either. And panic was the only thing that could have destroyed the world economy. We had all the resources and intelligence we needed. All we had to get right was the mood. And Obama delivered it.

Today the economy is stronger. Trump’s brand of optimism is exactly the right fit for this situation. If we believe things will get better in a Trump administration – and apparently the public does believe that – the belief itself will make it happen.

The average citizen doesn’t understand economics. We don’t understand the Federal Reserve, currency fluctuations, trade deals, or much else in that field. But when we see Trump and Pence negotiate with Carrier and Ford to keep jobs, we understand that. When Trump says he will negotiate with Boeing to lower the cost of Air Force One, we get that.

Trump, the Master Persuader, is rewiring our brains in real time – while we are watching him do it. He wants us to be optimistic about the economy, so he finds the right buttons (Ford, Carrier, Boeing) and he pushes them. He looks for situations that have simplicity and a visual element. It is easy for people to imagine a Ford automobile, a Carrier air conditioner, a factory, a worker, an airplane, and Mexico. Every element of these stories is visual. That’s not an accident. That is technique.

And as I explained to you in a prior post, Trump and Pence are playing what I call the “New CEO Move.” That involves moving fast and decisively on day one to set the mood for the rest of their term. So far they have set the mood as aggressive negotiators on behalf of the country, clawing and fighting for every American job. That is persuasion perfection. I’m not a presidential historian, but I’ll bet Trump has handled the president-elect phase better than any prior president of the United States. And probably better than any leader-elect anywhere, at any time. Trump is managing our expectations directly. And he’s nailing it.

At the same time Trump and Pence are giving a master class in how to do the presidency right, their American critics are under the hallucination that we are living in some sort of 1930s Germany situation where Hitler just came to power. That delusion is the weapon of mass destruction left behind by the Clinton campaign that sold that version of reality to its followers. It was a dangerous strategy because the psychological “bomb” could only deactivate itself if Clinton won the election. Then she didn’t. So it falls to Trump to deactivate the delusion, which he has already started to do. Every time Trump acts sane, reasonable, and inclusive, the 1930s Germany delusion gets a bit weaker. A strong economy will weaken the Hitler hallucination as well.

On Climate Change

Trump is also well on the way to changing the public’s thinking on climate change. Trump met with Al Gore, and he’s meeting with climate activist and actor Leonardo DiCaprio on the topic. Trump is looking for common ground and education on the topic, I assume, but he is almost certainly also looking for the persuasion buttons. And this is a hard one.

The simple, visual persuasion favors the climate alarmists. They can point to rising seas, super hurricanes, and droughts. We can imagine all of that stuff and it scares us. Fear plus a visual element make for the strongest persuasion.

On the other side of the debate there is no visual persuasion available. Normal weather is just normal. And since you can’t “prove a negative,” there is no way to prove human activity and C02 production will NOT be the tipping factor that ends civilization.

If you think many people believe in climate science predictions because of the science and the facts, you don’t know anything about human beings. We just observed an election in which facts and policies barely mattered at all. What matters is how we feel. Climate change is the same situation. All of the natural elements of persuasion are on one side. We can visualize bad weather and it scares us. The other side has nothing, persuasion-wise.

I’m not a scientist, so I can’t evaluate the claims of climate science. But I’m knowledgeable in persuasion, and I can tell you with a degree of certainty that the number of citizens that believe in climate science predictions of doom would be the same whether the science was valid or not, because the persuasion advantage points in that direction. If something is scary and you can visualize it, you treat it like it is real. Even if it isn’t.

Some say that the risk of climate change is unpredictable, and that’s reason enough to get serious about it. Maybe climate change will do nothing but help crops in some places. But maybe it will destroy civilization. Shouldn’t we take seriously any risk with that much downside?

Answer: No.

Because lots of risks have a worst-case scenario. And they all look terrible if you think about them long enough. It isn’t rational to make all of your major decisions based on the worst-case scenario for every situation.

My best guess from the perspective of a non-scientist observer is that human activity does change the atmosphere, but the climate prediction models are unlikely to be accurate because complicated models rarely are. Once you get more than three variables, and you have humans deciding which data to use and when to smooth it, you end up with nonsense. Climate science has more than a few variables. So I expect the models are nonsense, which is a separate issue from the underlying truth which could be anything. I don’t have any insight on the underlying truth of climate science. All I see is persuasion of various types.

Prediction: By the end of Trump’s term it will be considered common knowledge that we need to be aggressive in green energy for a variety of reasons, but the public will not trust the climate model predictions. We’ll get to a greener world for reasons of economics and strategy. We’ll never really know if we solved climate change problems at the same time.

And do you know what gets us to that greener world faster?

Answer: A strong economy.

You have never been safer.

—

You might like my book because of the strong visual persuasion I am using.

I’m getting great feedback on my startup’s new app for geostreaming your location to a friend/client/coworker as you approach your meeting spot. It’s like the Uber app without the Uber car. Here are links:

For the past year I have been working with the UC Berkeley start-up ecosystem – the largest in the world – to help improve their efficiency. I seed-funded a project to build a website that connects entrepreneurs, advisors, and investors in the Berkeley area. But I’m also going to highlight in this blog some Berkeley start-ups that can substantially lower healthcare costs in the future.

Today’s focus is on DeviceFarm, a start-up that cures toe fungus using a patent-pending combination of plasma gas and a special liquid concentrator. You can see more on their website, here.

Disclaimer: I recently invested in this company. This is not a solicitation for additional funding.

Toe fungus is mostly a cosmetic problem unless you have diabetes. But if you are diabetic, toe fungus greatly increases your odds of amputation. DeviceFarm estimates that an effective treatment for this condition could prevent 45,000 diabetic amputations per year at a collective savings of $1.7 billion in healthcare expenses. (Current treatments are relatively ineffective.)

Let me say this again. This little machine might (if the clinical trials work out) prevent up to 45,000 amputations per year. Forget about the cost savings for a minute. Just think about how big a deal that is to quality of life.

Now multiply that sort impact by the dozens of health-related start-ups out of UC Berkeley alone. Now consider all the other start-ups around the world and you can see how much “stranded” potential there is because the start-up world is fragmented and inefficient.

Now imagine a world in which the President of the United States is an entrepreneur at heart and one of his biggest challenges is to make healthcare affordable and available for all Americans. And now imagine that this president is the best salesman you have ever seen, and he wants to streamline the process of doing business in this country.

See the opportunity?

I’ve seen scores of start-ups that will dramatically lower healthcare costs if their products get to market. All they need, in most cases, is a combination of investment, business advice, and some help getting through all the red tape. That’s the sort of help a Trump administration could provide without spending a dime. Trump knows how to put a spotlight on things, and the world’s attention follows.

I can imagine several ways to approach a solution. One way is for the Trump administration to encourage the creation of “strategic pools” of start-ups by category. One pool would involve start-ups that can lower healthcare costs for the benefit of all. Another pool might do the same for education, the military, and so on. Then the government could encourage investors to look at those start-ups first, as a patriotic service to the country.

You don’t want the government trying to pick winner and losers among start-ups, but the government can ensure that the ones with the most potential to help society get a fair look by private investors.

As a service to the country, I’ll be spotlighting more UC Berkeley start-ups that can change the world if they get the right kind of attention. Once you see several of them in a row, you’ll understand how big the opportunity is. I’ll only be scratching the surface.

—

You might like my book because anything is possible except for the things that aren’t.

— WhenHub App —

Speaking of start-ups, I’m getting great feedback on my startup’s new app for geostreaming your location to a friend/client/coworker as you approach your meeting spot. It’s like the Uber app without the Uber car. Here are links:

The most important job opening that Trump has to fill – at least from a “brand” perspective – is Secretary of State. You can get away with hiring loyal supporters for less-visible cabinet positions, but you need to get the Secretary of State job right because it directly reflects on the brand of the presidency. And Trump knows branding.

If you look at the Secretary of State from a Master Persuader perspective, it’s hard to know who would do the best job among the candidates under discussion. They’re all highly-capable people. And their opinions are not so different, otherwise they wouldn’t be in the final consideration. The big differentiator is how the country will view Trump’s choice, and how that changes their impression of Trump’s brand as president. Let’s take a look at the candidates through that filter.

Giuliani probably has some foreign business interests that could be problematic once the mainstream media sinks their teeth into him. That doesn’t help Trump’s brand because Trump has the same type of foreign conflict-of-interest issues. You don’t want to add to the problem you already have.

Huntsman has good experience and he presents himself well. But he’s too handsome for the job. Brand-wise, Trump is better off surrounding himself with highly-capable people who don’t suck too much attention out of a room. You might think that isn’t important, but it is from a persuasion standpoint. I liked Trump’s pick of Pence because Pence is the boring, monochromatic version of Trump that makes Trump look like a star when they stand together. You need the same contrast for Secretary of State.

Obama got the branding right with both Hillary Clinton and now John Kerry as Secretaries of State. Both Secretaries were respected players that have less rock star appeal than Obama himself. That is good branding. Obama got the contrast right, which you expect from a Master Persuader. Trump needs to do the same.

Romney has the same contrast problem as Huntsman. Romney is too tall and handsome. But I think ego will prevent Romney from accepting Trump as his boss. If Trump and Romney both wanted Romney as Secretary of State, it would already be done.

Petraeus had some legal problems in the past because he disclosed government secrets to his girlfriend. Although the crime itself is forgivable, and he paid the price, the topic would remind the public of Hillary Clinton’s email issues and be a stain on Trump’s brand.

Bolton would be the biggest brand mistake for Trump. Bolton is highly capable, but he gives off a scary vibe, and that is the worst branding mistake Trump could make. Half of the United States is already living under an illusion that Hitler just got elected President of the United States. If you add a war-loving white guy with a strange mustache to the illusion, you’re just making things worse. Trump’s biggest problem, brand-wise, is that so many people think he’s a crazy dictator who can’t be trusted with the nuclear codes. Bolton is the only candidate who makes that illusion worse. I don’t see Master Persuader Trump making a mistake of that size.

Rohrabacher would be an interesting choice. He fits Trump’s brand the best because he’s a pragmatic, straight-talking Republican. And if you see him standing next to Trump, you know which one of them is the president. The visual element matters more than you think, given that all the candidates are qualified.

I’m leaving out some candidates, but only because they didn’t seem interesting enough to help or hurt Trump’s brand.

The Master Persuader filter can’t predict who Trump will pick as Secretary of State because there are lots of variables we can’t observe. For example, the vetting process might kick up scandals we don’t know about, and there’s the issue of how well the candidates can get along with Trump. So this isn’t a prediction blog today. I’m just showing you how the persuasion element matters to the decision.

Before I start, let me say as clearly as possible that I agree with the scientific consensus on climate change. If science says something is true – according to most scientists, and consistent with the scientific method – I accept their verdict.

I realize that science can change its mind, of course. Saying something is “true” in a scientific sense always leaves open the option of later reassessing that view if new evidence comes to light. Something can be “true” according to science while simultaneously being completely wrong. Science allows that odd situation to exist, at least temporarily, while we crawl toward truth.

So when I say I agree with the scientific consensus on climate change, I’m endorsing the scientific consensus for the same reason I endorsed Hillary Clinton for the first part of the election – as a strategy to protect myself. I endorse the scientific consensus on climate change to protect my career and reputation. To do otherwise would be dumb, at least in my situation.

As regular readers of this blog already know, human brains did not evolve to understand reality in any deep way. If some of us survive and procreate, that’s good enough for evolution. It doesn’t matter that you live in a movie that says you will reincarnate after you die, while I live in a movie that says reality is a software simulation, and perhaps our mutual friend lives in a movie in which his prophet flew to heaven on a winged horse. Those are very different realities, but it doesn’t stop any of us from procreating. This lesson about the subjective nature of reality is one we learned from watching Trump’s march to the election. As the world looked on, everything they thought they understood about Trump’s chances dissolved in front of them. And yet the world still worked fine.

This perceptual change in humanity is happening as I predicted it would a year before Trump won. I told you he would change more than politics. I said he would open a crack in reality so you could view it through a new filter. That transformation is well underway. I’ll widen the crack a bit more today.

If you have been involved in any climate change debates online or in person, you know they always take the following trajectory: Climate science believers state that all the evidence, and 98% of scientists, are on the same side. Then skeptics provide links to credible-sounding articles that say the science is bunk, and why. How the heck can you – a non-expert – judge who is right?

You probably are not a scientist, and that means you can’t independently evaluate any of the climate science claims. You didn’t do the data collection or the experiments yourself. You could try to assess the credibility of the scientists using your common sense and experience, but let’s face it – you aren’t good at that. So what do you do?

You probably default to trusting whatever the majority of scientists tell you. And the majority says climate science is real and we need to do something about it. But how reliable are experts, even when they are mostly on the same side?

Ask the majority of polling experts who said Trump had only a 2% chance of becoming president. Ask the experts who said the government’s historical “food pyramid” was good science. Ask the experts who used to say marijuana was a gateway drug. Ask the experts who used to say sexual orientation is just a choice. Ask the experts who said alcoholism is a moral failure and not a matter of genetics.

There are plenty of examples where the majority of experts were wrong. What you really want to know is whether climate change looks more like the sort of thing that turns out to be right or the sort of thing that turns out to be wrong. Let’s dig into that question.

It seems to me that a majority of experts could be wrong whenever you have a pattern that looks like this:

1. A theory has been “adjusted” in the past to maintain the conclusion even though the data has changed. For example, “Global warming” evolved to “climate change” because the models didn’t show universal warming.

2. Prediction models are complicated. When things are complicated you have more room for error. Climate science models are complicated.

3. The models require human judgement to decide how variables should be treated. This allows humans to “tune” the output to a desired end. This is the case with climate science models.

4. There is a severe social or economic penalty for having the “wrong” opinion in the field. As I already said, I agree with the consensus of climate scientists because saying otherwise in public would be social and career suicide for me even as a cartoonist. Imagine how much worse the pressure would be if science was my career.

5. There are so many variables that can be measured – and so many that can be ignored – that you can produce any result you want by choosing what to measure and what to ignore. Our measurement sensors do not cover all locations on earth, from the upper atmosphere to the bottom of the ocean, so we have the option to use the measurements that fit our predictions while discounting the rest.

6. The argument from the other side looks disturbingly credible.

One of the things that always fascinated me about jury trials is that attorneys from both sides can sound so convincing even though the evidence points in only one direction. A defendant is either guilty or innocent, but good lawyers can make you see it either way. Climate science is similar. I’ve seen airtight arguments that say climate science is solid and true, and I’ve seen equally credible-looking arguments that say it is bunk. From my non-scientist perspective, I can’t tell the difference. Both sides look convincing to me.

As I have described in this blog before, I’m a trained hypnotist and I have studied the methods of persuasion for years. That gives me a bit of context that is different from the norm. In my experience, and based on my training, it is normal and routine for the “majority of experts” to be completely wrong about important stuff. But in the two-dimensional world where persuasion isn’t much of a thing, it probably looks to most of you that experts are usually right, especially when they are overwhelmingly on the same side and there is a mountain of confirming evidence.

We like to think we arrived at our decisions about climate science by using our common sense and good judgement to evaluate the credibility of experts. Some of you think you have superior sources of information as well. But both sides are wrong. No one is using reason, facts, or common sense to arrive at a decision about climate science. Here’s what you are using to arrive at your decision:

1. Fear

2. Unwarranted trust in experts

3. Pattern recognition

On the question of fear, if you believe that experts are good at predicting future doom, you are probably scared to death by climate change. But in my experience, any danger we humans see coming far in the future we always find a way to fix. We didn’t run out of food because of population growth. We didn’t run out of oil as predicted. We didn’t have a problem with the Year 2000 bug, and so on. I refer to this phenomenon as the Adams Law of Slow-Moving Disasters. When we see a disaster coming – as we do with climate science – we have an unbroken track record of avoiding doom. In the case of climate change danger, there are a number of technologies under development that can directly scrub the atmosphere if needed.

On the question of trusting experts, my frame of reference is the field of influence and persuasion. From my point of view – and given the examples of mass delusion that I have personally witnessed (including Trump’s election), I see experts as far less credible than most people assume.

And when it comes to pattern recognition, I see the climate science skeptics within the scientific community as being similar to Shy Trump Supporters. The fact that a majority of scientists agree with climate science either means the evidence is one-sided or the social/economic pressures are high. And as we can plainly see, the cost of disagreeing with climate science is unreasonably high if you are a scientist.

While it is true that a scientist can become famous and make a big difference by bucking conventional wisdom and proving a new theory, anything short of total certainty would make that a suicide mission. And climate science doesn’t provide the option of total certainty.

To put it another way, it would be easy for a physicist to buck the majority by showing that her math worked. Math is math. But if your science depends on human judgement to decide which measurements to include and which ones to “tune,” you don’t have that option. Being a rebel theoretical physicist is relatively easy if your numbers add up. But being a rebel climate scientist is just plain stupid. So don’t expect to see many of the latter. Scientists can often be wrong, but rarely are they stupid.

To strengthen my point today, and in celebration of my reopening of the blog commenting section, please provide your links to pro and con arguments about climate science. This might be the only place in the world you will see links to both sided. If you want to be amazed, see how persuasive BOTH sides of this debate are.

As I said above, I accept the consensus of climate science experts when they say that climate science is real and accurate. But I do that to protect my reputation and my income. I have no way to evaluate the work of scientists.

If you ask me how scared I am of climate changes ruining the planet, I have to say it is near the bottom of my worries. If science is right, and the danger is real, we’ll find ways to scrub the atmosphere as needed. We always find ways to avoid slow-moving dangers. And if the risk of climate change isn’t real, I will say I knew it all along because climate science matches all of the criteria for a mass hallucination by experts.

I’ve been observing and helping the UC Berkeley start-up ecosystem for the past year, and I’ve made several angel investments in that space. Berkeley has perhaps the largest start-up environment in the world, but it gets less attention than it deserves. I’ll try to fix that by spotlighting some of the more interesting start-ups that could potentially have a big impact on the quality of people’s lives. Today’s spotlight is on &AVA, a start-up that makes a life-changing product for the hearing impaired.

The product is a mobile app that works with a subscription service for real-time computer translation. If you go to dinner in a noisy restaurant, or a business meeting, for example, each attendee would have a copy of the app and keep their phone in front of them, in listening mode. When anyone speaks, the nearest phone translates and sends the text to each phone at the table. The hearing impaired person at the table can follow the conversation in the form of a live transcript on their own phone. This is life-altering for the hard-of-hearing.

I’ve seen the product work in demos and it is impressive. All the company needs at this point is more customers and more funding. If they can get to profitability it would mean an enormous improvement in the quality of life for millions of hearing-impaired people.

If you know any hearing impaired people, please share this post and the link to their website here. (Disclosure: I do not have any investment or other interest in this company but I haven’t ruled out investing in it later.)

—

You might also be interested in a new UC Berkeley website that points to all the important start ups and related resources in the UC Berkeley ecosystem. It’s called Berkeley Startup Network. The site is still beta, so expect the content to grow exponentially. I funded the prototype for this site to help UC Berkeley entrepreneurs find advice, education, and funding. The potential gains from this type of networking efficiency are enormous. The &AVA offering is just one of many examples of life-changing products coming out of Berkeley. I’m trying to help the Berkeley start-up ecosystem become more efficient for the benefit of civilization.

To put all of this in perspective, one Berkeley start-up has an inexpensive portable testing device for AIDS that could virtually eliminate transmission in some situations. Another startup would reduce the number of diabetes amputations by thousands. Another would eliminate one of the most common sources of hospital infections. And so on. So you can see how important these start-ups are to our future quality of life. I’ve decided to help in a variety of ways, including some blog posts about the most interesting start-ups.

I’ll also be telling you more about my own start-up, WhenHub, in the coming months.

By now you know that President Elect Trump took a call from the President of Taiwan and simultaneously lit on fire the underpants of the mainstream media and maybe the leadership of China too.

Apparently taking a phone call from the president of Taiwan is a major diplomatic change from the so-called “One China Policy” that imagines Taiwan as a rogue province of China, not its own country. Reports are saying this call was planned, not a mistake on the Trump team’s side.

Was this a mistake by Trump?

If you look at this call through the filter of normal politics it is clearly a mistake. It provokes the Chinese leadership and gains nothing obvious in return. The media is reporting this event as exactly the sort of thing that leads to nuclear annihilation. This is the same mainstream media that got everything wrong about Trump for the past year.

But if you look at this situation through the filter of a Master Persuader, it makes perfect sense. Trump is “setting the table” for future negotiations with China. He just subtracted something from China’s brand that they value, and later he will negotiate with them to maybe give it back in some fashion. Probably in return for some trade concessions.

But what about the risk? Does it ever make sense to poke a nuclear power? In this case, probably yes. As I have said in this blog before, China’s leadership is both mature and competent. Many of them have engineering degrees. They understand what Trump is doing, and none of it is a path to war because neither side has any interest in war. None. Zero.

I can imagine some scenarios in which China and the U.S. might dangerously escalate toward war, but one friendly call to a major trading partner isn’t one of the scenarios.

But why take that call now? Shouldn’t Trump have cleared this with Obama, or waited until he was President?

No. Because the Obama administration would have advised him not to do it. And waiting until January is the way old politics is done. This sort of bold, rapid action is evidently what Trump wants you to think is his brand as president. The Taiwan call is consistent with the New CEO Play that I described in this post. He’s setting the tone as bold, effective, and not waiting for red tape to slow him down.

Don’t worry about China going to war over a phone call. They understand Trump, in part because they read my blog too. And look at the brilliance of China’s diplomatic response. Their Foreign Minister labelled the phone call, “a shenanigan by the Taiwan side.“ That is exquisite diplomatic framing, Master Persuader-style. You can see why China and Trump respect each other; they both earned it.

Mutual respect is a safe place to be. Relax. Adults are in charge.

—

You might like reading my book because I won’t take a call from the President of Taiwan no matter how often she asks.

— WhenHub App —

Have you seen my startup’s new app for geostreaming your location to a friend as you approach your meeting spot? It’s like the Uber app without the Uber car. Here are links:

One of the more puzzling questions in the modern world is why so many guys send pictures of their junk to innocent women who have asked for nothing of the sort. It’s rude, vulgar, and worst of all – it doesn’t work.

You would think that 100% of men would know that sending d*ck pictures to women – especially strangers – is a bad idea. I’ll untangle this ball of string for you using the Moist Robot Hypothesis.

The Moist Robot Hypothesis (from my book) says – among other things – that our bodies control our thoughts as much – or more – than our thoughts control our bodies. For example, science knows that being happy can make you smile, but we also know that forcing a smile can cause your brain to generate happiness chemistry. The body-mind connection is a two-way street. When you understand this idea, the world changes for you.

The Moist Robot Hypothesis also assumes that most, if not all, of our “decisions” are little more than rationalizations for our instinct to procreate in the most productive way. And by that I mean mating with people who have genetic advantages that would make the offspring successful. That’s why people are attracted to beauty, because it is a visual proxy for good health and good genes. For the same reason, women are naturally attracted to successful men that have talent, money, or some other sort of advantage. (Obviously these are generalizations and don’t apply to all.)

You see the reproductive instinct in just about everything we do. We pick cars that signal our success. We pick clothing and hairstyles that present us as suitable for mating. And so on.

But dick pics?

As you have learned by reading this blog for the past year, people can only be rational in limited situations in which there is no emotional content. Our sex drive is so strong that it largely eliminates the option for rational behavior. And as you know, the hornier you get, the stupider you are. Once a guy reaches a critical level of horniness, his rational brain shuts off and he becomes primal. And when he’s primal, he sometimes signals his availability for mating in the most basic way possible: He displays his junk in full preparedness.

If you think the men doing this behavior are extra-dumb, or extra-rude, that might be true. But it is just as likely that such men are extra-horny. That gets you to the same decision no matter your IQ because the rational brain is shut down during maximum arousal.

It is also true – as far as I can tell from discussions with women over the years – that sometimes a dick pic actually results in dating and sex. I realize how hard that is to believe. But sometimes (maybe one time in 500) it actually works. You would think those odds would be enough to discourage even a man with a temporarily suspended intellect, but that view ignores the basic nature of men: We’re risk takers when it comes to reproduction.

Men are low value for reproduction because you only need one man to impregnate many. And so it seems that evolution has created men who will pursue super-longshot odds in the pursuit of sex. Dick pics fit that model.

If you’re a judgemental type of person, you see dick picks as the height of rudeness and inappropriate behavior. You think those men are pigs. From a legal and political perspective you might even see dick pics as a form of sexual assault. But if you start to see the world through the Moist Robot filter, what you see is normal men whose brains turned primal during arousal and they did the most primal thing that came naturally – they displayed their suitability for reproduction.

One of the things I will enjoy about the Trump presidency is watching non-business writers try to explain his methods. Case in point, the recent stories about Ford and Carrier keeping some parts of their manufacturing in the United States because Trump negotiated/bullied them into staying. If you tell that story through a political filter – which is all I have seen so far – you focus on the facts. In this case, the political story is that both the Ford and Carrier situations are exaggerated claims of success.

The political filter misses the story completely. As usual.

Here’s the real story. You need a business filter to see it clearly. In my corporate life I watched lots of new leaders replace old leaders. And there is one trick the good leaders do that bad leaders don’t: They make some IMMEDIATE improvement that everyone can see. It has to be visible, relatively simple, and fast.

Why?

Because humans are not rational. Our first impressions rule our emotions forever. Trump has a second chance to make a first impression because his performance as President is fresh ground. Trump is attacking the job like a seasoned CEO, not like a politician. He knows that his entire four-year term will be judged by what happens before it even starts. What he does today will determine how much support and political capital he has for his entire term.

So what does a Master Persuader do when he needs to create a good first impression to last for years? He looks around for any opportunity that is visible, memorable, newsworthy, true to his brand, and easy to change.

Enter Ford.

Enter Carrier.

Trump and Pence recognized these openings and took them. Political writers will interpret this situation as routine credit-grabbing and exaggerated claims. But business writers will recognize Trump’s strategy as what I will call the “new CEO Move.” Smart CEOs try to create visible victories within days of taking the job, to set the tone. It’s all about the psychology.

If you are looking at Trump’s claims of success with Ford and Carrier in terms of technical accuracy and impact on the economy, you will be underwhelmed. But if you view it through a business filter and understand that psychology is the point of the exercise, you’re seeing one of the best new CEO moves you will ever see.

I’ll say this again because it’s important. We’re all watching closely to see if President Elect Trump has the skill to be president. And while you watch, Trump and Pence are pulling off one of the most skillfully executed new CEO plays you will ever see. Remember what I taught you in the past year: Facts don’t matter. What matters is how you feel. And when you watch Trump and Pence fight and scratch to keep jobs in this country, it changes how you will feel about them for their entire term. This is a big win for Trump/Pence disguised as a small win.

The political press will dismiss Ford and Carrier with fact-checking. But the stock market will be smarter. Experienced business people recognize the “new CEO” move and they know how powerful and important it is.

If you are worried about Trump’s talent for leadership, this should help set your mind at ease. He hasn’t even started the job and he’s already performing better than any past president in the same phase.

—

In related news, my girlfriend Kristina Basham lost her blue verification badge on Instagram yesterday without explanation. She has 2.2 million followers and there are dozens of fake accounts using her name and photos, so she is exactly the type of user who needs the account verification badge. We’re left wondering if this sudden change is related to my writing about Trump.

You should be disturbed that there is no official way for me to know if this happened for technical reasons or because of some internal Instagram policy. This is a frightening lack of transparency for a social media company (Facebook/Instagram) that is so vital to business success that one could argue it should be regulated as a public utility.

The context here is that I’m already shadowbanned on Twitter for writing about Trump, and trolls have one-starred my book on Amazon.com for political reasons. I’ll keep you informed as I learn anything. But I probably won’t.

—

You might like reading my book because the non-troll reviews of it are exceptional.

— WhenHub App —

Have you seen my startup’s new app for geostreaming your location to a friend as you approach your meeting spot? It’s like the Uber app without the Uber car. Here are links:

When Trump started his historic run for the White House last year, I blogged that he would change more than politics. I said he would forever change how we view reality. And so he has.

The mainstream media and the public now accept the idea that Trump ignored facts, science, and even common decency… and still got elected. I have been telling readers of this blog for a year that facts don’t matter. Policies don’t matter. The only thing that matters is persuasion. And Trump has plenty of persuasion.

To be perfectly clear, when I say facts don’t matter, I mean that in the limited sense of decision-making. If you make the wrong decision, the facts can kill you. That’s not in debate. I’m talking about the process or arriving at a decision – whether it is a good decision or not. The decision-making process is largely divorced from facts and reason. We live under a consistent illusion that facts and logic guide our decisions. They don’t.

The exception to this rule is when there is no emotional dimension to a decision. For example, if a mechanic says it will cost you $1,000 to fix your car, and you can see no other option that makes sense, one could say that facts and logic guided your decision to approve the repairs. But emotion-free decisions are unusual. You rarely see emotion-free decisions when it comes to politics, relationships, or even your career.

And this brings us to the question of President Elect Trump’s seeming disregard for facts as he plowed through the competition to reach the presidency. The common view from his critics is that Trump is an idiot. The common view from his supporters is that his facts are not so wrong, or at least they are directionally accurate. I don’t subscribe to either interpretation. I find the Master Persuader filter is a better way to understand this strange situation.

A Master Persuader – and anyone trained in hypnosis or persuasion in general – knows that humans don’t use facts and reason to make important decisions. Most persuaders prefer sticking to the facts when possible, but that is mostly to avoid looking like idiots. They know that sticking to facts will not persuade.

Trump just takes things one step further. He doesn’t pretend the facts matter when they don’t. To put this in more practical terms, Trump does the things that matter and ignores the things that don’t. He just has a better idea than the public and the media about what matters. For example…

The public thinks facts matter for decisions. They don’t.

The public thinks being “presidential” matters for getting elected. It didn’t.

The public thinks Trump should have studied the issues more deeply. And he will, as needed. But he didn’t need detailed policy knowledge to get elected (evidently).

The experts said Trump needed more ground game. He didn’t.

I could go on, but I hope you see the pattern already. Trump ignores the things that don’t matter – even to the point of looking the fool – and pays deep attention to what DOES matter. That’s what made him our next president.

When Trump was running for election, facts and reasons and policy details didn’t matter to the outcome. He knew that. I knew that. Every trained persuader knew it. But the general public did not, and that is the realization that is beginning to dawn on the world.

Once in office, facts and reason do matter more. Trump is moving from the job of talking about issues to the job of doing something about them. In his new role, he will pay attention to details and facts and reason as much as humanly possible, with the help of advisors. You already see this transformation happening as Trump moderates his positions on waterboarding, prosecuting Clinton, and even climate change.

If you have not studied persuasion it makes perfect sense to be in a panic about a Trump presidency. You see a pattern of irrational-looking behavior from Trump during the election and you assume the trend will continue into the presidency. But if you understand the tools of persuasion you see a Master Persuader ignoring what doesn’t matter and paying close attention to what does, for the benefit of the country. That is literally the safest situation I can imagine.

As president, facts do matter. Reason matters. Logic matters. But persuasion does too – and it is still hugely important to the job of being president. Don’t expect Trump to embrace any facts that are not important to “making America great again.” But I do think you can expect facts to influence Trump when they do matter.

If you are worried how a President Trump will address climate change, here’s what to expect. You can expect him to dissect the topic in terms of the facts that matter and the ones that don’t. You can expect him to eventually agree with scientists who say human activity is contributing to climate change. But when it comes to the prediction models, and America’s ability to fix the problem at a reasonable cost, expect him to be more skeptical than the general public.

That isn’t crazy. Complicated models that try to predict the future rarely succeed.

I realize that the stakes are high if I’m wrong. But keep in mind that a year ago I was giving Trump a 98% chance of winning the presidency when experts were at 2%. And my prediction was based on the persuasion filter.

I don’t believe human brains evolved to understand reality at an objective level. The best we can do is pick filters that do a good job of predicting what’s ahead. The Persuasion Filter predicted Trump’s win when most other models did not. Now I use the same filter to predict that Trump will turn from totally ignoring facts (because facts don’t matter to elections) to embracing the facts that do matter to the country.

You can still expect Trump to ignore any facts that don’t matter, such as the exact number of non-citizens that voted for Clinton. In that case he was making the press think past the sale (that non-citizens voted) and forcing them to spend time talking about the exact number until our brains uncritically accept his central premise that lots of non-citizens voted for Clinton. That is pure persuasion. He won’t change the methods that work. Watch and learn.

If you aren’t following the dark corners of social media you might not know of something called Pizzagate. Snopes.com calls it a “detailed conspiracy theory.”

The basic idea is that a pizza parlor in Washington DC is alleged to be the center of a major child sex ring that involves top Democrats close to Hillary Clinton. I have labelled this story “not credible,” and that opinion is confusing people because there is a mountain of evidence supporting the allegations.

So let me tell you what a mountain of evidence is worth.

Mountain of Evidence Value = zero.

In the normal two-dimensional world in which we imagine we live, a mountain of evidence usually means something is true. So why am I looking at the same mountain of evidence as the believers in pizzagate and coming to an opposite conclusion?

The difference is that I understand what confirmation bias is and how powerful it can be. If you don’t have the same level of appreciation for the power of confirmation bias, a mountain of evidence looks like proof.

Here’s what I know that most of you do not: Confirmation bias looks EXACTLY LIKE a mountain of real evidence. And let me be super-clear here. When I say it looks exactly the same, I am not exaggerating. I mean there is no way to tell the difference.

That sounds crazy, right?

Suppose dozens of children started coming forth and detailing sex crimes in this particular pizza parlor. Would that prove it happened, or would I call that more confirmation bias?

I would call that more confirmation bias. In fact, the situation would be identical to the famous McMartin Preschool case in the eighties in which lots of kids made similar and untrue claims of abuse. We don’t have to wonder if a “mountain of evidence” including dozens of first-hand accounts can be false because we know it already happened. Moreover, cognitive scientists can tell you that this sort of massive mistake is more normal than you can imagine.

I want to be totally clear here that I’m not saying Pizzagate is false. I see the mountain of evidence too. And collectively it feels totally persuasive to me. It might even be true. I’m not debating the underlying truth of it. That part I don’t know. My point is that what you see as a mountain of evidence that can’t be wrong, I see as something that is far more likely to be confirmation bias. If I had to put a number on it, I’d say perhaps a 20-1 odds the Pizzagate story is false.

Let me put this in a more familiar context. Most of the Pizzagate believers are also Trump supporters it seems. And Trump supporters have watched first-hand as half the residents of the United States concluded that Trump was the next Hitler. Why do tens-of-millions of people believe such a preposterous thing?

It’s because there is a mountain of evidence to support the allegation. Case in point, just yesterday Trump suggested that perhaps flag burners should be punished. That’s clearly dictator talk! (Except that Hillary Clinton proposed that actual law in 2005.)

The argument for Trump being the next Hitler is built on the same type of confirmation bias as Pizzagate. Both allegations are supported by a mountain of evidence. But if you look at each piece of evidence in isolation, none are individually persuasive.

Let me summarize my point by saying that if you were not aware of the McMartin Preschool case you were also not intellectually equipped to judge the credibility of either Pizzagate or the Trump-is-Hitler idea.

People have asked me whether or not an understanding of how persuasion works can protect against unwanted influence. The quick answer is no. Persuasion typically works just as well when you see it coming and you know how it works. But in some specific cases a superior knowledge of cognitive phenomenon can help. This is one of those cases. If you know about the McMartin Preschool case, and you understand the real power of confirmation bias, you might have the tools to avoid believing in either Pizzagate or the likelihood of Trump turning into the next Hitler.

And now you have those tools.

As I told you last year, when a Master Persuader becomes president it will change more than your view of politics. It will change how you view reality itself.